Fairly typical phone call for me in this day and age. I'm one of those dinosaurs who still has basic phone service--no call waiting, no caller ID, no junk-calling lockout--just basic, old-fashioned, listed-in-the-book service, so I get a lot of these sales calls. Some tell me I can save a lot of money with a new credit card, others want me to install new windows and a few proudly announce I've won something: a vacation, a camera, a trip to an exotic location or a fine dinner if I would just come in and talk over my retirement plans.

I usually hang up with minimal civility and go about my business without a second thought. But today's call left me thinking how truly rude and obnoxious American life has become. I didn't ask for this call, didn't want information about a new phone service. Yet, here at 9 in the morning, while I'm home on vacation, I have some uninvited, pushy salesman jumping into my living room to try and talk my money into his pocket.

This is just another example of the if-it-works-it's-OK school of thinking that says the only thing that's important is getting your way, making your sale, making yourself rich, and how you do it is unimportant.

In other words, the end justifies the means and my home is not my castle. It's an open-door marketplace. Not exactly what I had in mind when I had the phone installed.

What I wanted was a way of reaching my friends and relatives, saying hello, catching up on things and staying in contact between wedding, funerals and weekend get-togethers. I also wanted to make dinner reservations, call work when I was too sick to go in and, occasionally, order a pizza. I knew I'd get a few strange calls because I was listed in the book but I figured that was a small price to pay for being easily found by people who'd lost my phone number and wanted to get in touch.

I never expected this massive invasion of my privacy, which not only rings my phone, but also knows my business. Laboring as I am under the old-fashioned notion that my doing business with a company is a private matter between the two of us, it was troubling to find this morning's salesman had information about my phone service at his fingertips.

This is the result, I assume, of court decisions which have shattered the concept of privacy by declaring that since the government regulates phone communication, all records pertaining to its conduct are in the public domain. Therefore anyone can find out who provides my phone service and give me a call about it.

That's disconcerting; but, unfortunately, it's only the tip of the iceberg. In spite of all the lip service we hear from politicians about the right to privacy, there is in fact very little.

For instance, not only are my phone records a matter of public record, so are my earnings. As a Chicago public school teacher, my exact earnings are published on thechampion.org. This Web site is run by a watchdog group that feels public money will be more responsibly spent if the public knows exactly how much I (and every public school teacher in the state) earn. I disagree and feel instead that my privacy has been violated. Unlike politicians who go into their profession with the understanding their lives are open to minute scrutiny, I just signed up to teach some kids, not have my neighbor looking through my wallet.

But whether we're publicly or privately employed, insurance companies, banks, internet companies, charities, catalog merchants, credit agencies, and even government institutions (like the secretary of state's office, which has been discovered selling its list of Illinois drivers to private companies) exchange and sell personal information without a moment's evident concern. Not a letter, not an e-mail, not a phone call asking, "Is it OK, Mr. Kramer, to share your information with others?" It's simply done.

This is not reassuring or comforting. It also makes me wonder why I even bother with a thin veneer of courtesy in dealing with these people. Given what they're doing, what they're part of, they don't deserve that much.